Sustainability gets the green light

For some, it's all about reducing the environmental footprint. | John Shinkle/POLITICO

For Brosowsky, composting is the last line of defense in a system in which anything edible can and should be put to its best and highest use — as food.

“If you’re running a commercial kitchen and you have leftovers at the end of the day, you want that stuff being donated,” he said. “You look at places like DC Central Kitchen and Martha’s Table, who are committed to food capture. They should all be in line in front of me.”

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In the home kitchen, he advocates for getting the maximum mileage out of your scraps.

“If you’ve got the stubs of carrots or celery or whatever, that should be going into a bag in your freezer until you’ve got a gallon bag full,” he explained. “And when you do, you take what’s in that bag, put it in a stock pot, fill it up with water, make yourself some vegetable stock.”

“Cheapest, easiest stock you’ll ever have. And then after it’s mush, you can drain it out and put that material in the compost.”

Like Vogel, Brosowsky understands his role as a part of a practical approach he hopes will result in generational change.

“There is something kind of inherently optimistic about entrepreneurship,” he says. “You are betting on the future, you are creating something new with the idea that it will grow. I believe that, all things being equal, people want to do the right thing. So my job — as a parent and as an entrepreneur is to level the playing field as much as possible and enable people to make the best possible decisions.”

It’s one of the reasons he loves working with schools — and with his own four children.

“You want to create as many positive associations with sustainability as possible at as young an age as possible, so that when they get older their inclination is to do the right thing.”

But change is not going to happen overnight.

“We’re not going to snap our fingers and have everybody composting,” he said. “But over time, all of these little data points push things in a direction. And it’s encouraging.”

“The good news,” he continued, “is that the world is increasingly interested in sustainability writ large, and even the biggest companies, the ones you would think would pooh-pooh it or see it as an impediment are understanding that there are opportunities to do little things that make a big difference.”

This includes many of the restaurants, hotels and other businesses who turn to Compost Cab as an easy way to “get greener.”

In addition, they also offer a low-cost compost drop-off at Dupont Circle’s FRESHFARM market on Sundays.

“Frankly, it is a very easy conversation for an upper-middle-class guy to have,” he said. “If you are working two or three jobs just trying to get by on a daily basis, then composting is not a No. 1 priority for you.”